Israel on the Couch: The Psychology of the Peace Process

Foreword

ix ix Foreword O n the evening of May 10, 2000, during the fifty-second anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, a ceremony took place in Jerusalem in the area surrounding Theodor Herzl’s tomb. I was an Inaugural Rabin Fellow at the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv at the time, so I had the opportunity to attend this ceremony. The event was presided over by Avraham Burg, then Speaker of the Knesset. I had met Burg at the Knesset just a few days earlier, when both of us participated in a meeting that dealt with the themes of cultural diversity and coexistence. I remember thinking that he was an exciting speaker and I could see that most of the two thousand or so Israelis in attendance were stirred by his remarks. My Israeli friends who accompanied me to Mount Herzl translated Burg’s remarks. He was urging his audience to live up to the vision of an idealized Israel where deep and troublesome societal divisions no longer exist. The assassination of Rabin on November 4, 1995 by Yigal Amir, a Bar Ilan University law student, shocked Israeli society, and left them asking how it was possible for one Israeli to kill another. An Israeli psychoanalyst, Rena MosesHrushovski describes in her book Grief and Grievance, an Israeli “soulsearching ” that took place after the assassination. Israeli intellectuals wondered how they could facilitate the coexistence of different political and religious groups and overcome the destructive splits among Israelis’ multiple religious factions and ethnicities. In the long run, however, according to MosesHrushovski , this did not occur. At the time of the ceremony, the country still had deep divisions. Burg’s address referred to this condition and cried out for a solution. While I was a Rabin Fellow, my wife and I rented an apartment on the beach in Tel Aviv, a couple of blocks away from the American Embassy. At least four days a week I would take a bus to, and home from, the temporary location of the Rabin Center near Tel Aviv University. Each bus ride took about half an hour, and each time I observed a variety of Israelis who would, through integration and absorption, create a stable Israeli mosaic. Israel, in fact, has a minister of absorption, who is in charge of efforts to integrate various groups, especially the newcomers such as Russian Jews, into the society. My friend at the University of California, Los Angeles, Peter Loewenberg, an historian as well as a psychoanalyst, writes about “synthetic” nations, such as Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States: People from different cultures and with many variations of religious belief coming together to create a nation-state. Israel too is a “synthetic ” nation. When Burg’s address was finished, twelve Israelis, representing different groups within the country, spoke briefly in front of lit torches and symbolically presented themselves as a unified Israel. A young woman, Oz (Sveta) Tokaev was a member of a group of one million recent “immigrants” from Russia. Zehava Baruch was the spokeswoman for Ethiopians. Boaz Kitain, whose son was killed in a helicopter crash, reminded everyone of grieving parents in a country where young people face real dangers. Two teenagers, one Jewish and one Druze, Ziv Shachar and Daniella Nadim Issa, spoke together, suggesting that Jews and non-Jews can coexist in the state of Israel. Others among the dozen speakers reminded the audience that there were citizens who were directly affected by the Holocaust and citizens who were representatives of women’s rights groups; however, some Moslem Israeli Arabs and ultraOrthodox movements were not represented. In the excitement of the evening, however, one could visualize an idealized and unified Israel. As a Turkish-American living in Israel for only four months, it was obviously difficult for me to observe the divisions in Israeli society, especially those pertaining to religious differences—even though I made a specific effort to observe and understand them. During the first month of my stay in Israel, I met the author of Israel on the Couch, Ofer Grosbard, who has combined his enthusiasm for the intellectual understanding of the problems of Israeli society with his empathy for all. Whether we had lunch together in an Arab restaurant in Haifa or visited the kibbutz that his father-in-law, a pioneering Zionist, helped to establish decades ago, Grosbard explained to me what kind of societal problems, desires, and conflicts Israelis faced. During our...